Why your contractor website is losing you bids you never knew you were in
A GC's project manager spends forty seconds on your site before deciding whether to call. Here is what they check, in order, and why most contractor sites fail all three.
There is a kind of lost job you never find out about. A project manager at a GC had you on a list of four subs to call. They looked you up first. They called three.
It happens more than any contractor thinks, and it is almost always the website. Here is what the PM was checking.
Check one: do you do this exact work
Not “roofing.” Not “electrical.” The PM has a scope: a 40,000-square-foot TPO re-roof with a tapered insulation package, or a 60-unit multifamily electrical rough-in. They are scanning your site for evidence you have done that, at that size.
A site with “Services: Commercial, Residential, Industrial” fails this check. A site with a page titled “Commercial re-roofing” that mentions TPO, tapered insulation and square footage in the first paragraph passes it.
Check two: have you done it at this size
The PM is managing risk. They need to know you have run a job this big without falling over. They are looking for a project list, with sizes, with building types, with the GC named if you were allowed to.
A gallery of unlabeled photos fails this check. A project page with “Industrial warehouse, 120,000 sq ft, TPO over polyiso, completed on schedule for [GC]” passes it.
Check three: is anyone home
Is the site current. Does it load. Is there a real person named. Is the phone number the office or a cell that rings into voicemail. Is there a form, and does it look like anyone reads it.
A site last touched in 2021 with a “News” page that stops in 2019 fails this check. It signals a company that is not paying attention, and the PM has twenty other things to not pay attention to.
Why most sites fail
Because they were built as brochures. Someone picked a template, put the logo on it, wrote three paragraphs about quality and integrity, and moved on. Brochures answer “who are you.” Prequalification answers “can you do my job.” They are different documents.
What fixes it
- One page per service and per market, written for the buyer who lands on it.
- A capabilities page that mirrors a prequal form: licenses, bonding, insurance, EMR, safety program, project list.
- Projects with numbers: size, type, system, schedule, and the GC or owner named.
- A named person, a phone that is answered, a form that goes somewhere.
- A site that is obviously maintained, because it is fast and the content is dated this year.
None of that is hard. It is just work most agencies do not do because they do not know what a prequal form looks like. We do.
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Fifteen minutes. No pitch deck.
Tell me what you build and where the leads come from today. I will tell you what I would change, and what it would cost. If it is not a fit, I will say so on the call.